


Do you think they care where the crown goes?

by Eatgreass



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Song fic, act 3 scene 3, claudius praying, hamlets indescision, no beta we die like literally everyone in this play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: Plenty- AeseaesThere are sad realities everywhere you look. The sad reality was that Hamlet’s father- King Hamlet- was dead.





	Do you think they care where the crown goes?

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it's a song fic. In 2021. But listen- Plenty is the song that immediately makes me think of Hamlet. Please go play it as you read.

There are sad realities everywhere you look. The sad reality was that Hamlet’s father- King Hamlet- was dead. 

_ In the Land of Plenty, _

And his uncle sat on the throne that should have been his. Hamlet stewed in his misery, thinking of a throne that belonged to him and of a wine-sodden uncle, laughing as Fortinbras split the country in two. 

_ We don't know what the word no means. _

No. Hamlet didn’t want this, he didn’t want to play the role assigned to him, and he didn’t want to be trapped inside the walnut that held his mind. Denmark was a prison and Elsinore was the worst of it, and Hamlet desperately,  _ desperately  _ wanted to say no to the power plays he was a witness to. 

_ Give it to me. _

It’s  _ his  _ crown, and he wants it back, and he’s lashing out. Ophelia doesn’t deserve this. His father told him not to do this to his mother. 

But who cares?

_ Give me all the things I want. _

He wants his father back. He wants Horatio. He wants Ophelia, but without the strings of her father attached. Hamlet wants so much. 

_ Make it new and shiny, _

And yet… And yet, Hamlet still feels the silver of his fathers armor slipping through his hand, still sees the barely corporeal form in his mind's eye, still sees the glimmer in Horatio’s eyes and the light in his smile in Wittenberg. And yet… 

_ And make them watch me, _

And yet it had all gone to hell. He was a prince, and a price could not go mad. Only he could, because he  _ had,  _ and the line in his mind dividing pretend from real was getting thinner and thinner. Horatio was the only return to reality. 

_ Make them watch me. _

_ His  _ world. His play, his power,  _ his  _ court, watching the prince Hamlet go mad in front of all of Denmark, and Hamlet didn’t care in the slightest that he was making a mockery of all that the kingdom had meant to stand for. Claudius had created that mockery long before Hamlet had exacerbated it. 

_ Turn the power on and wait for light. _

The players had been a loaded time bomb and so had the court. Who’s fault was it, really, that Claudius had acted the way he did? Hamlet had watched his uncle fall apart, and though he was overjoyed that the ghost wasn’t a figment of his imagination, or worse- a devil, Hamlet had no idea what to do.

_ All the pleasures that you paid for, _

And he couldn’t lie to himself, not with things like this. Not forever. He’d been nasty to Ophelia, he’d dug his claws into her, and then he’d blamed her when the barbed arrows didn’t come back out smoothly. He felt guilt, deep in his heart, but he could push that away for as long as he needed. 

_ All the skipped turns that you saved for, _

A payoff, that’s what he needed. What he needed was a sword in his hand, and his uncle lying flat on the floor, dead by that very same blade. 

_ All the nights you fell asleep without your gun. _

His uncle was sitting right outside the door, praying and utterly defenseless. 

_ A coronation,  _

With just one slice of his sword, the corruption in the castle would be cut off from its roots, and Hamlet would have his birthright. 

_ A beheading. _

It should be easy, and yet his hands shake on the hilt of the blade, even with both hands gripping the sword. 

_ From the funeral, _

And so he’s dead, and so he goes to heaven. 

_ to the wedding. _

And so it is resolved. 

_ Do you think they care where the crown goes? _

But that’s not fair, is it? That his father was killed and went to purgatory, and Claudius will go to heaven? Hamlet hesitates. He sheaths his sword, closes his eyes and prepares to move on. 

_ Show the crowd you're happy, _

Only Claudius knows you can’t pray away a fratricide, and Hamlet is stuck. Claudius can see Hamlet out of the corner of his eye, and he sees the sword sheath, and he does nothing to betray his guilt. 

_ Like a movie, like a movie. _

A denouement avoided, both Claudius and Hamlet think in tandem. The only difference is the amount of disappointment in their thoughts.

_ What's your story?  _

Elsinore would stay unchanged under wicked rule, for Hamlet refused to send his uncle to heaven. 

_ What's the refund policy? _

Perhaps that was where the tragedy truly began. 

_ We want violence, _

Hamlet wanted to watch his uncle’s hands grasp at heaven, and he wanted to see the fear in his eyes as the other man died. He wanted to hold a sword to Claudius’s throat, he wanted to feel the pain raw. 

_ We want blood. _

He wanted a stained sword, and Hamlet wanted the eyes of the man that had hurt him looking up at him through glassy tears. But he wanted the man to go to hell.

_ We want superhero love. _

Maybe when the cause turned from setting it right to searching for vengeance, that’s when Ophelia went mad. Maybe she was always like that. Maybe there was nothing Hamlet could have done to stop her, and maybe if he’d stabbed the king while praying, Polonius wouldn’t have died, and Ophelia would have lived. 

_ We want all the answers that you promised us. _

Hamlet takes another long look at his uncle, still prostrate on the ground, praying to a god that won’t answer. 

_ We want laughter, _

Absurd. Ridiculous. Awful decisions, because Hamlet cares more about revenge than setting it right. 

_ We want pain. _

He was going to make his uncle  _ hurt.  _

_ Everyone will know our name, _

He was going to assure that everybody knew it was him, Hamlet the Dane. 

_ Did you know that no two missteps are the same? _

Hamlet walked away from the praying form of his uncle. 


End file.
